Anna’s party sailed from Havre on Friday, and it was not until the following Thursday that Mr. Haverleigh arrived at the chateau for the purpose of escorting her to Paris. During the last week he had spent much of his time with Eugenie, who on her return from Havre had been very gracious to him, and seemed in high spirits, breaking out suddenly into bursts of merriment on the most trifling provocation, and making him sometimes wonder if she was not going mad. She talked a great deal of ‘la petite madame et la petit garcon,’ and showed him the rooms they were to occupy, and made him buy a handsome crib for his son, and predicted that Anna would not return to the dreary old chateau when once she had tasted the pleasures of Paris.
“‘Why do you keep her shut up there?’ she asked him once, with a merry twinkle in her eyes. ‘I’d run away.’
“‘You could hardly do that with Brunell on guard,’ Haverleigh replied; adding, after a pause: ‘Madame Haverleigh, you know, has not been quite right in her mind, and quiet was better for her. Her own family recommend it. They know all about it.’
“‘Mon Dieu, how the man lies!’ was Eugenie’s mental comment, but she merely said: ‘Tell me more of madame’s family—of the sister and the brother,’ and she persevered until she had heard from Haverleigh again all there was to know of the mother, and sister and the boy Fred, of whom Eugenie seemed to like particularly to talk.
“‘I shall wait so impatiently for you to come with madame,’ she said to him when he left her to go to the chateau, and in her eyes there was a look which puzzled him, and which he could not fathom.
“If he had staid a little longer she might have betrayed the secret which so tormented her; but he was gone at last, and on his way to Chateau d’Or, wondering, as he went, if it were wise in him to take Anna to Paris, even for a week. At the chateau she was safe and out of the way, and gave him no trouble, while in Paris she might seriously interfere with his actions. On the whole, the chateau was the best place for her, he decided; but he would give her more freedom there, and she should be at liberty to ride around the country as much as she chose, and go and come like any other sane person.
“Thus magnanimously arranging for Anna’s future, Haverleigh arrived at the chateau in the afternoon train, and wondering a little that his carriage was not waiting for him, started to walk. It was the lovely month of June, when southern France is looking her loveliest, and the grounds about the chateau seemed to him especially beautiful as he entered them by a little gate, of which he always kept the key.
“‘Anna ought to be happy here,’ he said, and then, glancing up in the direction of her windows, it struck him as odd that every one was closed.
“Indeed, the whole house had a shut-up, deserted appearance, and impressed him unpleasantly as he quickened his footsteps with a vague presentiment of evil. The first person he saw, on entering the court, was Celine, who, at sight of him, screamed out: